The present invention is concerned with a folding box, and in particular with a folding box of the type having a front side provided with a removable window cover and a backside which includes a central bending fold extending across the backside.
Such folding boxes are widely used as packaging containers for chocolate bars which are individually wrapped and can be separately withdrawn from the opened folding box after tearing off the window cover to create access to the chocolate bars. By bending along the bending fold, the folding box can be set up in form of a roof-shaped display box, with each side of the folding box containing one layer of chocolate bars. Since the window cover extends over both outer sides, the chocolate bars can easily be withdrawn.
Apart from the decorative effect of such folding boxes, the ease by which the chocolate bars can be withdrawn is also of advantage. Problems were encountered, however, in connection with retaining the set up display position of the folding box in which both legs of the folding box extend at an acute angle to each other and respectively accommodate a layer of chocolate bars. The folding box should stand firm also during removal of single chocolate bars, with their legs being secured in their position relative to each other. It was thus proposed to secure the folding box by means of a locking element in form of a metal foil which is glued in the area of the bending fold by partly covering the latter. Preferably, the metal foil is a compound foil with an aluminum core which greatly resists a return of the legs to their original position.
Even though the use of such a metal foil may be sufficient to secure the roof-like or acute position of the folding box, there are drawbacks which render its use uneconomic. The metal foil, which is taken from a spool, is applied, partly manually, in a separate working step upon the blank before insertion of the chocolate bars and folding of the blank to create the folding box. Since folding boxes are mass products, the necessity of additional steps and manual handling adversely affects, however, the economic efficiency of the product. Moreover, since such metal foils cannot easily be removed, the disposal of such folding boxes becomes more complicated because they cannot simply be recycled as waste paper.